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SCO's bankruptcy hearing scheduled for Monday in Delaware has been cancelled. The next one will be on July 12 at 1:30, or so they say, so if you were planning to attend on Monday, please rearrange your plans.

This is the third time in a row that SCO has cancelled a bankruptcy hearing. They cancelled in May, and they cancelled in April, and now again they cancel in June. Is there perchance something they'd rather not tell the judge? Something they don't want the creditors to bring up? You think?

I have a question for him. Why isn't SCO in Chapter 7? What is the plan to pay off the Yarro loan so all the assets don't end up in the hands of the man who started this whole fiasco?

I guess Judge Gross will just have to wait to find out SCO not only lost the jury trial, which he knows already, but also SCO's laughable effort to get the copyrights given to them as a present from the judge in Utah anyway. What to do? What to do now? How to stay protected in bankruptcy (so IBM can't eat them alive) while they try to figure out if they can appeal and if so, how. A hearing might be a tad awkward at the moment, I'm guessing.

No opinion on In Re Bilski will issue today. The next possibility is June 21.

Opinions today were in Dillon v. United States, Schwab v. Reilly, Ontario v. Quon, Stop the Beach Renourishment, Inc. v. Florida Dept. of Environmental Protection and New Process Steel, L. P. v. NLRB. All are available at the link as PDFs, and there are some highlights by Tony Mauro on Law.com.

According to SCOTUSblog, Schwab was the last undecided case, except for Bilski, argued during the last November session.

I don't know about you, but the suspense is killing me.

OLPC has just been awarded an order from Plan Ceibal for 90,000 XO's for teenagers in Uruguay. Yes, there will be a new XO specially for teenagers. Uruguay already has 380,000 of the original XOs for younger children, and now the kids can graduate to one designed for them as they mature.

It's to be a dual boot laptop. Note not triple boot. No Microsoft in this picture at all. GNOME has leaped into the pool to help out. The press release says, "It will feature the learning-focused Sugar user interface together with the Gnome Desktop Environment to provide a dual-boot Linux operating system with office productivity tools." I wish I were a teenager in Uruguay so I could have one. If they do the partner program, I'm in.

It has a larger keyboard, larger keys than the XO for little kids, different colors, and it will come with specialized learning programs for older children. It has a rugged surface still, will be faster than the earlier XO, will use 3 times less electricity than usual laptops, and it can be powered by alternate sources like solar panels. It ships in September. OLPC lives.

You see? Even with Microsoft and Intel in the picture and some tacks strewn on the roadway, you can't kill off a project that's FOSS-supported. The code is out there, volunteers will continue to work on it regardless of what the Big Boys pay for, despite all the nay-saying in the media, even bogo-lawsuits, and in the end, it moves forward if there is a real need for the project. I really commend Sugar for the role it has been playing.

What a lovely story.

Whenever there is a big win in the SCO case, I always do the same thing. I rest up a bit. I surf around to see what others are doing, listen to audio of cases I'm interested in, and just set aside all the work and responsibility of Groklaw for a few days.

And as I was surfing around yesterday, I noticed that OpenSource.com has an article about building communities that work. The author mentioned that there was a need for someone to write about how to handle trolls: When I was looking through the chapters on communities in The Open Source Way book, I eagerly flipped to the sections, Do not let poisonous people bog down the community and Disable poisonous communication to see how open source leaders handle these problems. Unfortunately those sections are still blank, so it seems this is a problem that plagues even established communities. And I thought, I have done that already. I did an essay for the O'Reilly book Open Sources 2.0, edited by Chris diBona, Danese Cooper, and Mark Stone, back in 2005, in which I addressed it. So I tried to find it online, so I could post a link to it. I found it on Google Books, and I decided to read it again, to make sure it still reflected my views and that it would match what the author was looking for. Here's the bitter part: despite my essay being under a Creative Commons license, Google wouldn't let me read it in its entirety.

Here you go, munchkins. Judge Ted Stewart has ruled for Novell and against SCO. Novell's claim for declaratory judgment is granted; SCO's claims for specific performance and breach of the implied covenant of good fair and fair dealings are denied. Also SCO's motion for judgment as a matter of law or for a new trial: denied. Novell is entitled to waive, at its sole discretion, claims against IBM, Sequent and other SVRX licensees.

CASE CLOSED!

Maybe I should say cases closed. The door has slammed shut on the SCO litigation machine. The judge writes in the Memorandum Decision and Order about SCOsource, "Finally, while SCO's witnesses testified that the copyrights were 'required' for SCO to run its SCOsource licensing program, this was not something that SCO ever acquired from Novell." He totally got it. He noticed Darl McBride admitted that SCO didn't need the copyrights. It couldn't be any better if I'd written it myself.

Was the jury misled or confused? Not at all, the judge writes: "The jury could have rejected the testimony of SCO's witnesses for a number of reasons, including their lack of involvement in drafting the APA, the fact that there was little testimony on any actual discussions concerning the transfer of copyrights, or that many of the witnesses had a financial interest in the litigation."

"The Clerk of the Court is directed to close this case forthwith," Stewart writes in the final judgment. I believe that means SCO v. IBM is essentially over now, unless IBM wishes to pursue its counterclaims.

And now it is -- finally -- time, once again, for my red dress! And a huge thank you to Michael Jacobs and the team at Morrison & Foerster, who never gave up but, more importantly, showed that you can fight hard and win with ethics and dignity, and to Sterling Brennan of Workman|Nydegger, who was frankly absolutely wonderful at trial. And thank you to you, Groklaw volunteers, because we made a difference in this world.

Novell has filed a Notice of Appeal in its antitrust litigation against Microsoft. That's the case about its WordPerfect claims. Despite Microsoft prevailing on its motion to dismiss, for technical reasons I'll explain a bit in a minute, I want you to read what the judge said Microsoft did to Novell:Microsoft did not just withdraw a charitable helping hand; rather, Microsoft allegedly first cooperated in an effort to improve its own product, subsequently misled Novell into relying on information provided pursuant to that cooperation, and then withdrew its cooperation after Novell reasonably relied on Microsoft's representations. Ouch. Bad doggie. Microsoft didn't prevail because it was clean as the driven snow, in other words. It prevailed on a theory of what the contract covered that is so convoluted, I can barely explain it to you, although I will try, and because as a result of that theory, the judge ruled it was too late to go to court over what happened. I wanted to remind you, in case some of you have forgotten, that it's not historically unmitigated good news when Microsoft decides it wants to partner with you.

And I've done the opinion as text for you because the judge explains in some detail not only Microsoft's anticompetitive conduct but also how antitrust law works, so it will fortify you with the knowledge to know it when you see it, in case Microsoft is ever a bad dog again. What? They'd never? They love openness now and are born again and all? Some seem to think so.

We now have the transcript [PDF] of the February 25, 2010 combined hearing on Novell's Daubert motions and final pre-trial conference between the parties in SCO v. Novell before Judge Stewart.

I think you may be surprised at how cordial and pleasant it was. Nobody choked anybody in the hallway. And Judge Ted Stewart, it turns out, has a sense of humor. In the end, however, he ruled against Novell on all its Daubert motions.

China has issued a paper defending its censorship of the Internet. John Oates of The Register describes its eerie language:The paper claims: "Chinese citizens fully enjoy freedom of speech on the Internet. The Constitution of the People's Republic of China confers on Chinese citizens the right to free speech. With their right to freedom of speech on the Internet protected by the law, they can voice their opinions in various ways on the Internet....

But the limits to this freedom would cover almost everything. The paper warns: "Citizens are not allowed to infringe upon state, social and collective interests or the legitimate freedom and rights of other citizens. No organization or individual may utilize telecommunication networks to engage in activities that jeopardize state security, the public interest or the legitimate rights and interests of other people."

And that's not all. There are separate laws against disseminating vulgar or pornographic material, anything that may subvert state power, undermine national unity, infringe upon national honour, advocating heresy and spreading information that infringes upon the legitimate rights and interests of others. Gambling, propagating heretical or superstitious ideas, spreading rumours and disrupting social order are also banned Here, of course, in the US the government couldn't do that. There are, evidently, Constitutions and then there are Constitutions. But I have a question. Given the censorship of content for applications for the iPad and now Microsoft's phone, what are the implications for journalists?

It's a start! SCO fi...na...l...ly pays the constructive trust monies, what it owes Novell, to Novell: $625,486.90.

Do you remember a couple of years ago Barracuda Networks asked us to help find prior art to help deal with a Trend Micro patent on, believe it or not, blocking viruses at the gateway, of all obvious things?

You did find some, the ITC then said the patent, #5,623,600, was invalid, and you'd think that would be the end of that.

But no, software patents live in their own illogical alternate universe, and because Trend Micro and Barracuda settled instead of getting a court ruling of invalidity, Trend Micro was free to threaten others and to continue to take in royalties on that patent.

Some of you were asking the other day what would happen if a patent was ruled invalid, whether a prior licensee could stop paying. That's exactly what this Fortinet story is about. So we will find out, because Fortinet had earlier signed a license with Trend Micro, and when it noticed the ITC ruling and all the prior art Barracuda had presented, which it says hadn't been disclosed to it or the USPTO by Trend Micro, it didn't want to keep paying money for a license for nothing. It stopped paying, and there is ongoing litigation. In addition, Fortinet wants to finally invalidate this patent in court and at the USPTO, for the benefit of us all, and it would like your help.

First step is to read the 300-page petition for re-examination [PDF] Fortinet just filed with the USPTO on the '600 patent. I'll highlight some things in it, but there's a list of prior art they have already. And here's a Fortinet statement, along with many details on this latest development. A snip from the petition: Reexamination is requested in view of the substantial new questions of patentability presented herein. Requestor reserves all rights and defenses available including, without limitation, defenses as to invalidity and unenforceability. By filing this Request in compliance with the Patent Rules, Requester does not represent, agree or concur that the '600 patent is enforceable, and by asserting the substantial new questions of patentability herein, Requester specifically asserts that claims 1-22 (all claims) of the '600 patent are in fact not patentable and as such the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) should reexamine and find claims 1-22 unpatentable and cancel such claims of the '600 patent, rendering the '600 patent null, void and otherwise unenforceable. I'll bring you up to date, and then I'll tell you how you can help.

In 2009, Norway decided that ODF was to be used, rather than OOXML, but called for further study and input from the IT industry, and I gather Microsoft put its shoulder to the wheel, and guess what? Now there is a new report (in Norwegian) that compared the two and concludes that neither is suitable, and both should be kept "under observation". So, what should the government use as their standard if the report's conclusions are accepted? What's left? Previous legacy binary formats, one assumes?

Wait. No, it didn't. It didn't compare OOXML, the ISO standard, with ODF. It compared *ECMA-376*, which is not an ISO standard, with ODF 1.1, which is, but which no one much uses any more, practically speaking, last I heard, since everyone has moved to 1.2. What's the logic there?

Yes. That's what happened. I kid you not. ECMA-376. Whose idea was that? I mean, if you are going to compare standards, why not compare the two ISO standards? And if it doesn't have to be an ISO or other international standard for the comparison, why not use ODF 1.2? The study acknowledges it solves problems he found in 1.1.

Lars Marius Garshol, working for Bouvet ASA, explains his assignment on his blog:Now, I was asked to consider two specifications only: ECMA-376:2006, which is the very first OOXML standard (not the one later published by ISO), and ODF 1.1. For what possible purpose? In order to end up concluding that Norway shouldn't use either one, perchance? Would that not give Microsoft time to get its useless OOXML "standard" into shape, matching up with what its proprietary products actually do? If you read the credits in the report, you might form an opinion.

Here's something interesting, a Santa Cruz 8K from October 26, 1998, which consists mostly of two press releases announcing the IBM-SCO joint partnership to do Project Monterey.

Guess who would be providing the bulk of the high-end enterprise capabilities and contributing them to UnixWare? Hint: Not SCO.

The idea of the project was a single Unix for the enterprise that Intel, IBM, SCO, Sequent, etc. would all unitedly push, for Intel's IA-64 platform and UnixWare would be beefed up for IA-32, and thus the end result would be one UNIX everyone could market for IA-32, IA-64 and Power platforms, after pooling resources. But it was IBM and Sequent, now part of IBM, who would do the heavy lifting with regard to the high-end beefing up.

Here it is, SCO's Reply to Novell's Response to SCO's Motion for a new trial or for the judge to just give them the copyrights:

05/28/2010 - 875 - REPLY to Response to Motion re 874 MOTION for New Trial filed by Plaintiff SCO Group. (Hatch, Brent) (Entered: 05/28/2010)

I know some of you wondered if SCO had given up and faced reality and wasn't going to file. Hah! Nevah happen. The full title of the document is "SCO's Reply Memorandum in Support of Its Renewed Motion for Judgment as a Matter of Law or, in the Alternative, for a New Trial". Wow. It's like the good old days with SCOfolk. Here's why they say they need the copyrights: Because ownership of the UNIX and UnixWare copyrights is required, at least, for SCO to enforce its rights against third-party infringers and to pursue enforcement of claims transferred to it under the APA, the jury's verdict cannot stand. They want to sue the world some more, at least, and their argument has shifted a bit now to depending on the claims they say were transferred to them under the APA. Wait. Did they argue that at trial? It's true they fought for a jury trial, but "doing so does not surrender the protections provided by law for a case where the jury is confused or misled into an untenable decision." OMG. The jury was "confused" or "misled". Of all people to complain about *that*! They are so funny to me. I hope the judge has followed the cases enough over the years to understand why.

Would you like to see how lawyers and judges talk to each other when there's no jury around to worry about? We get to, because the court has now made public the transcript of the August 21, 2009 hearing [PDF] in Psystar v. Apple. All we knew at the time was the very spare wording in the minutes of the hearing.

As you'll see, when judges talk to lawyers, it can be very straight talk. No feather boas or glitter, no pretty pictures, and no smoothing over what he thinks. You'll also see a lot of strategy in real time on the part of the lawyers as they try to read the judge's inclinations and mood, not to mention trying to see how to help him grasp what he doesn't yet understand. And the judge? He's cutting to the chase, looking at the law, the issues, and what his role is and what the jury should and shouldn't hear. What was at issue in this hearing was discovery violations.

Strange. After six months of no activity, here's an entry in the Pelican v. Darl and the Gang suit:

05/20/2010 - Minute Entry for proceedings held before Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald: Oral Argument held on 5/20/2010. (mro) (Entered: 05/24/2010)

Oral argument about what? No indication...Perhaps the motions to dismiss, at last? That was my first thought, but it turns out PACER lists it, if you dig a bit, as a status conference, not a hearing. So I'm a bit puzzled. If it was indeed a status conference, presumably the judge wants to get the case going again, if it's going forward. If so, there should be a schedule or some indication of life on the docket fairly soon or a notice that it's been settled or dropped, or whatever the parties are doing that we don't know about yet. And if it was oral argument, then it was a hearing, and there should be an order eventually.

I have a request from End Software Patents' Ciarán O'Riordan. He'd like your help.

He says VC good guy Brad Feld is interested in in mailing out copies of the film Patent Absurdity (Full title: Patent Absurdity: How software patents broke the system) to 200 people -- politicians, influential people in companies, policy setters at standards groups, and whoever will be influential in the debate the breaks out post-Bilski -- and he'd like to have some help from you coming up with a list of who best to send to.

I was looking around, trying to find a case where a judge directed the jury to rule a certain way or decided the jury was wrong and so overruled them. As you know, SCO is asking the judge in SCO v. Novell to overturn the jury's verdict, as one possible form of relief it would like. So that's why I started researching. And I stumbled upon a case, one that I think will also illustrate another point I keep making but some of you find hard to accept. It was a case in the 1800s involving the issue of women's suffrage. The defendant was Susan B. Anthony. Her crime was voting in an election "while she was a woman".

Today's xkcd comic, titled Infrastructures, says it all.

The EU Commission has just announced its 5-year plan for IT, which they call its Digital Agenda:The Agenda outlines seven priority areas for action: creating a digital Single Market, greater interoperability, boosting internet trust and security, much faster internet access, more investment in research and development, enhancing digital literacy skills and inclusion, and applying information and communications technologies to address challenges facing society like climate change and the ageing population. Examples of benefits include easier electronic payments and invoicing, rapid deployment of telemedicine and energy efficient lighting. In these seven areas, the Digital Agenda foresees some 100 follow-up actions, of which 31 would be legislative. What interests us at Groklaw the most on that list of seven areas is interoperability, I'd wager, and here's the goal they set for that:Improve ICT standard-setting and interoperability

To allow people to create, combine and innovate we need ICT products and services to be open and interoperable. I can't help but think of Microsoft's recent bragging about not being fully interoperable with Google Docs. I think they're not yet on the interoperability train that is already leaving the station, and I hope they hop on board before it's too late. Meanwhile, ECIS has issued a statement, commending the EU Commission on its Digital Agenda, particularly the part about interoperability:We're pleased the European Commission has given broad support to interoperability, and gratified it believes government acquisition of software should adhere to open standards.